Choices
by digimaniac-falkor3
Summary: It was a stupid thing to do, I know. But the way things ended up, it was the only thing I could do. Sam's thoughts during iOMG.


In retrospect, kissing Freddie was probably not the best option.

There weren't a whole lot of options, though, not the way the night went, what with Freddie's stupid mood app telling everybody I was in love.

Am in love.

But it's definitely not Brad. The boy's sweet, and the fudge he makes could make a mute hobo sing, but I learned my lesson from the bacon boy a few years back. No deluding myself into believing great food is the same thing as love. So while Brad is a cool guy and I love hanging out with him, I'm not in love.

I'm not in love with Fredward, either. He's gotten a lot… well, less irritating since we all started doing iCarly together, so I don't really feel the need to throttle him whenever I see his face, but he's still got a whole mess of issues that I just don't care about. It's a lot more fun jerking his chain around than anything else I could do with him. Also, he kisses like a limp fish.

'But wait,' I guess you're saying now, 'if it's not one of those two, who else could it be? Spencer? Gibby? That hobo that lives in front of the Groovy Smoothie?'

First off, Gibby? Don't insult me. Anyway, it's none of those guys either.

It's not any guy.

I've known how I've felt for a long time now. I dunno when it started, but I guess it's always been there, ever since we met, and it just sorta grew over time. Oh yeah, I'm definitely in love. But I can't tell anybody. It would completely ruin everything.

See, like I said, I've known for a long time how I felt, and at first it terrified me. I mean, it still does, but I've gotten a handle on it by now. In the beginning, though, I completely freaked. I tried anything to convince myself it wasn't true. Right about when I kissed the nub (the first time), I figured out I'd really gone too far. There was no arguing, no going back. I just had to stare my demon in the face and accept it.

I'm in love with Carly.

Even accepting that, though, didn't mean I had to do anything about it. She means the world to me, so I did everything to keep us the same. I started dating a handful of guys, making sure they were all pretty lame so nobody questioned me when I broke up with them. I mean, they weren't totally nublike, but some of them were pretty bad. It was a lot easier than trying to figure out how to tell anybody the truth, though, and so it became a sort of habit. I would point out cute guys, talk about dating like those other girls do, just act like everybody else.

Tonight, though, that habit got stretched to the breaking point. Sure, I coulda said I loved Brad, and we could have tried dating for a while. I know I would break up with him eventually, though, and this time everybody would ask why. Because Brad's a good guy, anybody really would be lucky to have him as a boyfriend, so I wouldn't have any good reason for a break up. And anyway, if he fell in love with me, it would've just ended up painful for everyone, and I couldn't do that to him. He doesn't deserve that at all.

So dating Brad was out. Of course, she had to push the issue, asking me why I was hanging out with the guys so much if I didn't love Brad. To tell the truth, it's been getting harder for me to be with her all the time and not tell anybody, so I'd been helping with their project and everything in order to get some time "alone", so to speak. Obviously couldn't tell her that, though, so I just dodged the issue as best I could and tried to find some space to be by myself.

Then of course Freddie had to track me down and start giving me this whole speech about how I really should just go for it and it was really obvious that I liked the guy considering how I'd been acting (I really don't hate Freddie, by the way, as much as I threaten him with bodily violence – that's really just how I relate to most people) and he just wouldn't shut up and leave me alone which was all I wanted and seriously, how difficult is it to just go away without constantly pushing a person when you have no idea what's going on? Seriously.

So he kept talking and talking, and I was so, so tempted to tell the truth, just once, because I needed to have somebody to talk to (and hey, it would finally give us something in common that wasn't directly related to iCarly stuff), but then I saw Carly. She was inside the classroom watching us talk, and I knew I would never be able to keep Freddie quiet enough to tell him out here. So claiming I loved Brad was out, telling him the truth was out. I guess I could've said I loved Spencer or something (I had claimed to have a crush on him a while back to keep more suspicion off of me), but that would've just been weird. I mean, he's Carly's big brother. I couldn't seriously see myself with him more than I could with Gibby. Well, probably more than with Gibby, but he was definitely near the bottom of my serious possibilities list.

Anyway, point is my hands were tied in about five different ways at that point, and Freddie was still talking through all of this about feeling scared and just going for it and I figured, what the heck, there are worse things in the world, and I kissed him.

He was just as much of a limp fish as I remembered.

I kinda realized what I was doing about halfway through, and I stopped. He had this completely shell-shocked face (which made sense, I guess), and all I could think of doing was apologizing. I mean, I was about to make his life that much more complicated.

Heck, my life is gonna be much more complicated. Everyone's gonna think I'm in love with this nub now, and while that was kinda my plan going into that, on this side it isn't much of a fun idea. And… well, I got a glimpse of Carly's face after we broke apart.

She looked just as floored as Benson.

I dunno if I'll be able to handle her looking at me like that while this thing blows over. I really don't. So really, kissing Freddie was not one of my better choices.

I guess I don't really have any others, though.


End file.
